A story told by former Microsoft developer Dave Plummer sheds light on the origins of the Format Disk dialog box, which has stood the test of time since its inception during the transition from Windows 95 to Windows NT.

How did everything happen?

Plummer recalls the circumstances that led to the creation of this dialog. The developer needed to create a custom interface for the Windows NT platform. This solution was supposed to be temporary until a more perfect option emerged.

The simplicity of the initial interface design, which included disk formatting options such as file system, label, cluster size, compression, and encryption, proved surprisingly durable. Even on-the-fly decisions like the 32GB FAT volume size limit remained unchanged for years, even though the underlying file system supported much larger volumes.

It’s notable that despite the many user interface changes Windows has undergone since then, the Formatting dialog box remains intact.

While other legacy UI elements are still present in modern versions of Windows, the Formatting feature appears to follow the “if it’s working, don’t change it” philosophy.